What happens when a handful of idealists turn a quiet idea about human potential into a global movement—and then have to live with the power that follows?
We sit down with Marcia Martin, whose new memoir, Sex, Power, and Transformation, peels back the curtain on the early days of EST (later Landmark), the boom in personal development, and the private reckoning behind public influence.
She’s candid about the thrill of growth, the seduction of authority, and the moments that forced her back to center. We dig into the difference between timeless teachings and the systems that deliver them, and why great leaders refuse to hand out answers and instead create space for people to find their own.
This conversation is also a toolkit. Marcia breaks down how the mind learns, why meditation is a skill, not a mood, and how to celebrate being a beginner. She shares searing losses, hard pivots, and a faith-infused commitment to alignment over applause.
If you’re a coach, creator, or curious skeptic, you’ll leave with grounded strategies to quiet the mind, spot culty dynamics, and choose contribution over ego.
To connect, work or book Marcia, head to her webpage: www.marciamartintransform.com
Stream now, share with a friend who loves personal growth, and tell us: what practice brings you back to center? If the episode moves you, subscribe, rate, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
SPEAKER_00:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
SPEAKER_02:
Hey librarians, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release Out Reveal Purpose. And today’s Marsha Martin. And boy, does she have a story to tell? And I can’t wait for her to dig in. But before that, I’ve got to say she sent me her manuscript on sex, power, and transformation, her new book. And the self-help empire told by the woman who helped build it. And she was behind it all. She was a woman that in her 20s landed in San Francisco around the time that the self-help industry was just beginning to take shape. And she was behind the scenes working that empire that’s now what$48 billion worth. And I’m part of that empire because I’m a life coach. So all life coaches, all self-help authors, anybody that works in this industry, this is the woman that started it all. So without further ado, Marsha, thank you so much for joining us on Release Out Review Curvus.
SPEAKER_01:
Thank you, Sylvia. Oh my goodness, I’m so honored to be here. And I have to say, I didn’t build it all by myself. I helped build it. But there was just a handful of us. So I can say I was one of the few people and certainly one of the few women that was there in the very beginning of the human potential movement and helped it come into existence.
SPEAKER_02:
Well, the way that whoever wrote your um foreword, I think there was another Marcia.
SPEAKER_01:
Marcia Seleckson, the great author and journalist.
SPEAKER_02:
I loved her foreword. I thought it was so authentic and genuine in the way she spoke about you. And I felt like I knew you. I don’t want to start and stop reading, you know. It’s so well written. And I just I want to dig into this.
SPEAKER_01:
So please, please share with us your amazing story of transformation. It is an amazing story. And when I read it, I’m even amazed by it. Um, as you’ll see in the book, Sex, Power and Transformation is the title. It’s available on Amazon. It’s already become a bestseller. And it’s my memoir and the story, not only of me as a young girl becoming a woman, but becoming a woman in a man’s world and being a powerful woman dealing with men with power and the lessons I learned from that, while at the same time just happened to be on the front lines of creating and building the human potential movement and the whole self-help industry. So it’s pretty remarkable for sure. And I’ve been told by so many people who are in the midst of reading it or who have read it that it’s a page turner. It’s like reading a thriller or a history or a memoir all together in one, and it’s fascinating. And I’m very proud to say I didn’t use AI. I haven’t learned how to use AI yet, have to tell you. And I didn’t have a ghostwriter. This story came from my heart, and people tell me it’s like living it themselves. You feel like you’re there, you feel the pain, you feel the joy, you’re in the middle of the questioning and the success and the betrayals, and you’re just inside of it. So I’m very proud of the book. And my story is I started, as many of us do, um, with a father was he was abusive, not physically, but emotionally and mentally. And he was abusive to my mother. And I grew up, I was very talented, always quick, top a student, uh, could run faster than the boys, could jump higher, could uh was a better artist, was a best actress, was this best, best, best. But inside of me, I was always trying to prove myself. I think because I wanted my father to love me. And he was an alcoholic, and he was a very injured, lost man. And I tell the story a little bit of his background in the book, how he and my mother met, and what that was like. I was pretty much the parent rather than having them be the parents, it seemed like. And I became a mother when I was so young because I had to take care of my siblings when they were just babies, because my parents worked and they usually work the graveyard shifts. So it was kind of being a grown-up as a child. But one of the things I remember when I was little is I watched my mother and father fight, and I thought to myself, and I’m sure this is the universe seeing me, using me, knowing what my destiny would be and how I could make an impact in the world. I remember thinking that people needed to learn how to love. And that somehow that was going to be my mission. I was going to teach people about love. And so, as a young girl in my early 20s, I found myself in San Francisco, as many of the baby boomers did, at that early 1970s time when it was just the beginning of the hippies. We were love children, we wanted peace. It was the middle of the Vietnam War, and we wanted the war to stop. We thought love should handle everything. San Francisco was very beautiful then. It wasn’t drug-ridden, it was really um looking at exploring our human potential and who we could be, and we were all together and we lived in communes and we were peaceful. And I remember sitting in the Golden Gate Park with my floppy cowboy hat on the grass, you know, getting spare change as I played my guitar. And if somebody went by that I thought looked like they needed the change more than me, I would actually give them my change. So I was that kind of a hippie baby boomer. And it was the era of when human potential just started. Jose Silva, Alexander Everett with Mind Dynamics, um, a lot of the very small, very first Esselon had just been created by Michael Murphy, and we were just beginning to realize that we could be bigger than we knew, that we had more potential, that we could develop ourselves. And I happened to meet Werner Earhart, who was the founder of Est, which became Landmark, which is now the largest personal development company in the world with over three and a half million graduates. But when I met him, he was just uh starting to train a course called Mind Dynamics before we even created Est. And there was 30 of us in that class. And at the end of that class, I had a vision. And I took the class because previous to meeting order and finding out about mind dynamics before Est was created, I interned with my aunt, who was a clairvoyant healer and an esoteric astrologist. And she taught me about personal power and she taught me how to meditate, and she taught me about metaphysics, and she taught me about energy, and she taught me how to heal, and she taught me how to get in touch with the powerful bigger self within me that had the wisdom. And so when I first met Werner and I took the first training from him with the 30 people, that was called mind dynamics at that time. What I thought was this was going to be the vehicle to bring what I had learned from my aunt about who I was and who people could discover who they were to the masses. I wasn’t even taking that training to help myself so much, as I was as I wanted to take this training and help it grow to become more available to more people. Little did I know that we were about ready to start a cultural revolution and a cultural phenomenon, and that not only would we grow, we went from those 31st students in that first seminar. I became the vice president and in charge of marketing and filling events and producing events, which was a whole story in itself about learning how to fill auditoriums with five and six and eight thousand people. Um what happened was by the time I left, there was almost 800,000 graduates. So that arc from the early 1971 to when I really separated from Est at the very end of 1979, which is less than almost 10 years, was remarkable. But then I, you know, because of my fame, and I did have fame at that time, um, being kind of the face of Est and introducing Werner at the special guest seminars and at the events and filling the events and producing the events and training the staff to enroll, creating some of the programs that now are the introductory seminar leaders program training programs. It was it was I learned also the deficit of power, the warning signs of when people get taken and kind of get power is addictive. And um I learned this not just in Est before I became landmark, but also um as I work with John Hanley in Lifespring, as I work with Tony Robbins, I ran his business for two years and helped take him national. I helped Jack Canfield create and I co-created the Transformational Leadership Council with him. So I’ve been in the realm of self-development my whole life. And what I’ve noticed is everyone, whether they’re the leader or the participant, we need to be very careful that we stay tuned into our inner wisdom. Because pretty soon when we start getting all of the benefits from being tuned into our inner wisdom, we start getting the gifts of that and the rewards, and we start having success and even fame and wealth and power. Sometimes, if we’re not careful, we can lose our path because people are really willing for someone else to tell them what the answer is. And so it because people are so willing to allow somebody else to say what our answer is, we don’t want to find our own answer, we’re afraid or we’re not sure how or we haven’t been taught, then the leaders who are the gurus or the trainers or the teachers have to be really extra responsible, to be clear that what their job is, is to be a safe container, to be with someone in such a way that that person can find their own answer rather than giving an answer to them. And that’s what happens sometimes, and then it becomes a cult and people become righteous. And so I’ve learned so much through all of those lessons myself of the times when I was afraid to say something because so many other people agreed that it should be a different way, and we all probably knew that it was wrong what we were doing, but because everybody was doing it, nobody wanted to stand up and be the one person that said this is wrong. And so how you go along with and you find justifications to make yourself right about things, even if you’re against your own values or doing things that you can see are harmful. And I also learned the difference between the organization that produces the courses and the courses or the methodology themselves. So wisdom has been around for thousands of years. There are great masters and teachers that have given us wisdom, you know, that go back so many, many, many years. Um, so the wisdom is there, and then people create systems of how to deliver that wisdom. And sometimes the organizations and the systems and the containers of delivering wisdom begin to be the control mechanisms that say they’re teaching you a methodology to have you freed up from being in control. So here you are teaching freedom and being something that puts people in bondage sometimes. So there’s so much to learn. And you know, I I’ve had the experiences of losing a lot of money, of making a lot of money, of being very famous, of being isolated and left alone, of having my heart broken, of total success, of betrayal. I’ve been through it all. And what I’ve come to realize in my own transformation and my own lessons is that within, if I’m very still, I will find the connection that connects me with the rest of the universe and the wisdom and the power of the voice from whatever anybody wants to call that bigger power, whether it’s God or universe or divine, there is something bigger than each of us that connects all of us to everything, not just each other, but the rivers and the animals and the sky and the stars. And that if we’re diligent and responsible enough to keep listening to that quiet voice within ourselves, and sometimes our mind is so loud it’s hard to hear that quiet voice. So we have to learn to still our mind and to find that voice and to be connected to that higher power. And if you can do that, then there’s real flow in the universe, and things make sense, and things are um are um opened up and delivered to you in such a way that it makes it without effort, and so that’s where I’ve become in my life now. So this book is really an encapsulation of all of that, and and I think it’s a great story, it’s really fun and funny and and sad at times. I had a friend tell me, I laughed so hard, I thought I was gonna fall off my chair. And then he said, and then I started crying. I mean, my heart was just broken in parts. And then he said, and I got so angry, I just smashed my fist down on the table. And then he ended up by saying, and you know what, Marsha, that book still lives with me because it really made me reflect and think. So I thought to myself, boy, you can’t get much more than that in a book. So hallelujah, Lord.
SPEAKER_02:
And I love, I love rejoic as you’re talking about something that I know from experience myself, that when you sat and reflected on it, you felt all those emotions surface again and sat with them because you and I both know that we need to acknowledge those feelings and respect them and honor them. That way we release them to our higher source of power because only he can come in and take that and say, Okay, now you’re ready to move into your light, and this is what you’re gonna do next. And that’s that inner voice that we both hear. You learned it from your aunt on how to quiet your mind. Can you give us a couple of tips of that? Because in today’s fallen world, people are so I mean, it’s noisy out there, Marsha, as you know.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I do know. Well, I learned from the very beginning, I kind of did life backwards. I learned how to deal with life before I had any of the real traumas. And so when the traumas happened, I already knew how to be at peace, or knew that it was a gift, or considered that it was something that was probably teaching me something. So even though it felt the same way as all pain does, I had a perspective on it that allowed me to keep going. And I think that’s the power of the of the human spirit, also. But I think that one of the things that I’ve always known is you learn in two different ways. Uh, one, you learn through your mind by understanding something. So someone can teach you something and explain it and you will understand it. But you also have a body, and the mind and the body are connected, even though they’re not the same. They are connected, so they influence each other. When you have a thought, you will notice that your body, if it’s a sad thought, your body will droop. Um, and if you’re feeling pain, you start thinking thoughts about being anxious or something. So they influence each other and trigger each other, the mind and the body, but they’re separate. And how the mind learns is through understanding. How the body learns is through practice. The body has to do something to embody it to be able to learn it. And this is very interesting because if you notice any skill set you’ve ever tried to learn that you needed your body to know, like playing the piano or even riding a bicycle. You know, the first time you rode the bicycle, probably somebody told you about balance and explained it to you about how you’re supposed to be when you ride a bicycle. And even if you had a book and you read the whole book about how to ride a bicycle, when you get on that bicycle, it doesn’t matter all that you understand because your body doesn’t get it because it’s not in your body yet. And you have to start learning as a beginner. And here’s another kind of breakdown with human beings is human beings are thrown, which I mean they automatically go in the direction of being right, looking good, and knowing the answer. You know, you didn’t get up this morning and say, Today I want to look like a jerk. I want to have totally nothing work. I want to be wrong about everything. I want to look stupid and not know anything. You know, like, oh, what a great day ahead of me, right? You get up and you go, Today’s the day I’m gonna get a Done, I’m looking good, I’m feeling good, I know the answer, you know. And when we go out in life, if that’s not actually true, we all pretend. You know, we’re like totally saying to ourselves, I don’t know what to do in this situation, but we’re putting on this pretenses of I know what I’m doing, and I got it all together. Nobody knows what they’re doing, right? So here you are as a beginner, which is the only way you can learn or the body can learn, you have to practice as a beginner, you have to start, and what would you look like as a beginner? You’d look stupid and you’d be wrong, and you wouldn’t know how. Three things that you’re thrown to not want to do as a human being. So mostly people pretend rather than starting off as a beginner. And when you start as a beginner to learn how to still your mind, see what happens is if your mind’s racing, and I think it was Deepak Chopra that said this, I’m not sure, but he said the mind is like a great ocean. And when the ocean is tumultuous and raging and in you know total uh uh upheaval, you could throw the Empire State Building and not see the ripples that it made because it’s so full of all of the tumultuousness. But on a clear night, sometimes I’ve been in Hawaii on a sailboat and the sea is so smooth and just like glass. In that kind of an ocean, you can throw a P and see the ripples. So when you think of it like that, if you’re gonna create, everything starts from a thought or an intention. It’s like putting something into the ocean. You’re going to create it and manifest, create some ripples, have it be gain some momentum. Well, if your mind is all crazy like that tumultuous ocean, it doesn’t matter how hard you hold a thought, it’s gonna get lost in all of the noise. So, in order to create anything, you have to have a still mind to be able to hold a thought or an intention to be able to create anything in reality. So it’s a skill everybody needs. And if you don’t know how to do that and you haven’t done it, and you’re like 20 or 30 or 40 or even 60, you got a lot of habits that you you you know you have to get through and let go of to even learn the skill in the first place. You have to practice. So when people sit down to meditate, and meditation is a wonderful skill set to learn to be in touch with that quiet wisdom within yourself. You get to go inside. So it’s an important thing to be able to be still. But to be still, you have to train your mind first, and that takes practice. And most people sit down and they take two seconds and they say, Oh, I can’t meditate. Well, of course you can’t meditate. You’re a beginner, it’s not like you got on the bicycle and you could ride it the first time, right? So you have to have some patience and know that you practice and you do that a couple of minutes every day until you get a little bit calmer, until you get a little more still. And then at some point, however long it takes for you to be the piano player that you’re supposed to be, when you started off with chopsticks, just like meditation, you start off with, I can’t meditate. Um, it takes as long as it does for you to be able to still your mind, then you can create, and then you can connect inward to the higher power of yourself and receive all the wisdom for your own answer that you need for your life to be the perfect expression of itself that is meant to be. And you have the stillness to be able to take those, that wisdom and hold the thought and the intention to be able to create it into a reality and have results in the real world. So it’s an important skill and it takes practice. And I would say, most of all, what a person needs is a little patience and to know that if they start by not being able to see colors and not be able to be quiet, that that’s a win. Whatever they did in the first thing is a win. That’s they did being a beginner really well. They should pat themselves on the back and say, I was such a good beginner, I messed it totally up. So congratulations.
SPEAKER_02:
I love it. I love how you remind us that as anything in life, even as little kids, how we learned before people told us that we couldn’t do things. We we were fearless, right? We we got up and kept walking, we would fall and get back up and do it again and then we fall again, and here we go, we don’t stop again, and you commit a little because it’s not gonna feel good, right? To think about it initially, but then you just get better and better. And that’s uh thank you for that reminder. So no, it the image that I got as you were talking. I’m a visual person. The movie Eat Prey in Love when Julia Roberts is like sitting on the floor trying to investigate, she’s looking at the clock, going, How do I how am I gonna do this? you know, and that’s who we are. We’re just we want it now. And that’s the problem with our society today is that instant gratification. If you don’t have it now, I I want to quit.
SPEAKER_01:
Do you find that to be true? Or absolutely, and that’s why I say the biggest thing to remind people is you need some patience and to be willing to forgive yourself and to know that the beginner space is an art. It takes some skill to be a beginner. You have to be willing to be wrong, you have to be willing not to know the answer, you have to be willing to look stupid or clumsy, you have to be willing to be a beginner in order to be an expert. Because the only way from to get to expert is from beginner, otherwise, all you are is a pretender. And most people aren’t willing to be beginners, pretend they know what they’re doing and have the results of pretense rather than the results of real authenticity.
SPEAKER_02:
That takes like you said, patience and willingness, patience, not in our timing, obviously, but in in the universe or in God’s timing, because it is perfect. That that God’s master plan is so perfect, and when we reflect later, maybe not in the time that we’re moving through our journey. In those times, I think is keeping that that sense of presence is a good idea, not to get pulled into our past, which can happen easily. Our patterns are always in the background. They’re wanting to be, you know, they emerge from time to time, and and it’s up to us to acknowledge, oh, okay, there they are. Thank you. Yes, no, but I don’t need you right now, but thank you. Thank you for sharing up. I appreciate you. An identity that insists on I I had my seven-year-old little anxious identity that that follows my husband around when we fight. And she wants to make things right. Because I would like you, yeah. I had that relationship with my dad. My dad was a super high achiever, um, perfectionist, but he came from a highly abusive home. And in my own book, I also detail how abusive it was so that people could understand that that unhealed part of us projects in ways that you don’t intend. You know, they do the best job that they are consciously aware of of doing, right? And and when they don’t do the self-help and they don’t, you know, devote time to to their personal growth, they’re not gonna realize that they’re making a mistake until until it’s already out there. And then your little mind has already picked up on it. So we know the subconscious mind doesn’t have a filter, it’s always listening. So it’s really important for us to understand that that aspect. And like you, I wanted so much for my dad’s approval that I achieved to the form of exhaustion. And then came the medical diagnosis of like facing six doctors in a hospital room facing an 80% chance of dying, and got and the medical doctors not confident at all. And I was at the Texas, like like Houston Medical Center, facing facing what I was facing. And I remember just surrendering to God because I knew that science had was limited, and limited was God for me. Because I’m a woman of faith, and and that that testimony is is so strong, it’s my free chapter on my website. Because I want people to gain, to really understand that love that I felt, that understanding and that security that no one else outside of me can give me.
SPEAKER_01:
You brought up so many things. So, first of all, childhood is a very interesting thing because think about it, children don’t understand the concept of ownership until they’re around two or three, which is why it’s so hard to get them to share. Because they don’t get that it’s not theirs. If you take a two-year-old or a three-year-old into a candy store, they will just reach for the candy. They don’t understand, they don’t it’s not theirs yet, right? If they don’t understand ownership, then everything is mine, is what they how they look, that’s their perspective. So it also transpires to everything is my fault. So when a child looks out into the universe, like your children who are following you, if they see you arguing with your mate, they think it’s their fault. And we take on these things as children that oh, I did that. So it’s a it’s a very kind of opening piece of being a human being. Then the other thing is we have a mind that has a structure that’s a support system. Kind of like you have a library you can go to and check out a book and get information on anything. Your mind keeps its own library of traumatic incidents that happened between the time you were three and eight. And in that little recollection of whatever happened, if you went unconscious or you were in front of fear or you were threatened or you were in trauma, the mind thinks this isn’t a good enough incident to hold on to, to learn from, and it holds on to everything that happened, how you felt, what you did, how you acted, etc., like a holographic picture. And then if the mind sees anything in the future that looks like that old incident, then the mind has a trigger that says, oh, this is just like that. So let’s pull this out, let’s check this book out of the library and read it about how to act, right? And it puts you on automatic just immediately, that’s a trigger for you to react in a certain way, and you act just like you did then. And and what’s really sad about this is the mind needs some kind of uh system to know if this new event is like the old event. And the sorting system is if it looks like it, sounds like it, feels like it, acts like it, or anything accordingly, everyone says it is it, it’s the same. So you could get um knocked down by a dog when you’re three, which had hairy brown hair and a wet tongue, and then when you’re 18, be in the backseat of the movie house with your the football star that you’ve been wanting to kiss you forever, and it comes nearer and nearer, and the the black fur collar of his leather jacket, you know, goes up against your chin, and his tongue, you feel the wetness, and all of a sudden you start screaming and saying, Stop, stop, stop, and you’re antagonistic, just like you were when the dog pushed you down. You know, you got scared and you cried and you yelled and you screamed and you fought. And because the mind says, Hey, it’s the same thing, we better pull out that same old behavior and see if it works this time because we survived last time. So let’s try it out. So it’s a lot of stuff you have to be aware of to be able to say, Oh, my wow, I’m noticing I’m triggered, I’m on automatic before I act. Get back in present time, you know. And I always teach my students and the people that I coach and the people that I train in corporations, like I say, the axiom is center first, then act. Center first, then act.
SPEAKER_02:
Well, and you think you dance, like yeah, yeah, you have to come back to center. And you’re and you’re just like, oh yeah, getting this. It looks weird. Right, center, left, center, and then it’s like come back. What is your center? Yeah, for for some, it’s the awareness, it’s the presence. For me, it’s God, like center, center, come back, come back. I’ve been gone like these last two weeks. I received some news that kind of spun my world. And my light dimmed. And but you know, and I caught myself, and there were two days I quit talking to God. I was so mad at him. And and people don’t realize that I speak of him so well and I love him so well. But uh he knows when I get angry at him, and and he he gets it, he has a really good sense of humor with me. And and then he sends me messengers like you and the previous interview, you know, of like as a reminder, remember this. Come back to center. This is where you start off. You get crazy, your mind gets crazy, come back to center. What is it? Whatever it is for you as a human being, and it’s different for everyone.
SPEAKER_01:
But being present and in this moment and now, not in the future, not in the past, but being here, however, you get yourself there is everyone’s own expression for sure. And and I would say, you know, you have such a beautiful faith, and for me, faith is consciousness as well as faith, because consciousness expands, and as your faith grows, as it expands, you have a better understanding of what this is all about, what you’re meant to be here to do, etc. And how I explain it to myself is there’s kind of like four major stages of consciousness, and the first is where we operate as if the world is acting on us, we’re at the effect, and that’s a victim mentality. So I look to see the circumstances before I decide what I’m committed to, and my commitment depends on the circumstances, so the world is acting on me, and that’s a certain kind of consciousness where it’s being done to me, I’m not at cause, I’m not responsible, I can’t do anything about it, I’m a victim. And that kind of consciousness, the way it grows is it takes you to a place where it throws you down and spits you out. In other words, you have a breakdown. People usually, if they’re a victimized, victimized, victimized, get to the place where it gets so horrible that something inside of them says, wait, I’m here, I have willpower. And you call upon that space and you kind of pop into the next level of consciousness where you see that you can act on the world. It’s not that you’re a victim, you can cause things, but in that next level of consciousness, you’re causing things for you. It’s a very kind of self-centered causal relationship with the world where I’m gonna get me a house, I’m gonna get me some cars, I’m gonna get me a wife or a husband, I’m gonna get me a degree, I’m gonna get me, and you start accumulating things and producing things and making things and results that are all about you, you, you, you. And then at some point that consciousness expands or kicks into the next level when you start to say to yourself, is that all there is? Because none of those things really provide joy or fulfillment. You can never get enough of what you really don’t want. Doesn’t matter how many houses you have, it doesn’t fulfill you in such that a sense of contribution does. And so you c you clamor to have a higher purpose, and the beginning of faith comes in in terms of you say there’s something bigger than myself, there’s a bigger purpose here, there’s a bigger order, there’s a bigger power, and you start operating from that. Now, here is where I think you and I come in, because we have come to a place where that has happened. We have found that there is something bigger that we should be about. I’m not about the money, I’m not about the fame, I’m about the contribution. I want to make people’s lives better and this a better world, and I’m committed to that. But you pop into a different state of consciousness because the universe or God, your faith, Him, however you pronounce the beautiful world that’s the word that says who it is that is making all of this happen in the first place. Um when the universe notices you’re about contribution and you’re about giving and you’re about making this a better world, when you’ve done that enough and your life is about that higher purpose, the universe kicks you into another consciousness, which is it uses you. And that’s a very interesting space because if you don’t listen then, and the universe will give you a few warnings, you know, a couple of nods here, and a couple of you know, remind you and poke you on, you know. And if you don’t listen about after the third time, it just takes you down and slams you into a place where it will take you out of that path and put you in the path it wants you, whether you whether you think you know, it’s just you’re being used. And I think that’s where you are now. I know that’s where I am. I know that if I don’t stay true to the thing that I’m supposed to contribute and be about, so it’s dangerous for me, you know.
SPEAKER_02:
Like spiritual warfare, my love. And it comes at you really hard. Um, and it’s when you are already in mission, you’re already in purpose, yeah, and it’s coming to distract you from that and pull you back into the depths of despair. Yeah, it doesn’t realize is that in that darkness is where the light is the brightest.
SPEAKER_03:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
Okay. And how we can constantly being pulled back out.
SPEAKER_01:
I had an experience in my marriage, and I share it in my book, but I had stepchildren and one of them committed suicide. Now that was heartbreaking. He was only sixteen. He was just my favorite young man and he loved me and I felt very special because it’s hard for a child to have a stepmother and a mother. And you have your own loyalties. And he was just full out loved me. And um but what I realized is I knew that that marriage wasn’t going in the direction it should. I wasn’t being the person I was supposed to be. I was putting up with things that really weren’t aligned with where I thought was what my power, my destiny, my ability was. And as much as I tried to make it work, it wasn’t going to work because it wasn’t the path I should have been on in the first place. Now that’s a pretty big hit. But the minute that happened, I realized this is the kind of thing that happens that’s not supposed to happen in my life. In other words, this is not the flow for me. And when that happened, I just said to my husband, and we’re still great friends, I said, it’s this is over. This is not where either of us should be. We need to get divorced, we need to make our lives work the way that it should, because there was something off. And I think the universe does that in its own way. It takes you down if you and and we’re so stubborn as human beings, aren’t we?
SPEAKER_02:
We just like I told you at the beginning before we even started recording, it took a mech truck for me to just get snapped back into all right, child. I I’ve been whispering to you, you don’t listen. Okay, I love you, but here comes a little bit of pain. The divine one, you know, I’m like, here you go. And and he periodically will show up that that way. And then he’ll also show up in a gentle and loving way because, like you, I wanted my dad could be harsh. He was a perfectionist, and I loved him dearly. He passed away last year. But and that was the whole, thank you. That was the whole purpose of why he prompted me to write the first edition of my book, was so I could heal that relationship with my dad. And I we could be friends the last four years of his life. And then the second edition was more about the the real journey of out of the cage of fear into the joy and presence of joy, and then the ultimate, which is the level I’m in now, of trusting, trusting in God’s sovereignty, like totally releasing control and all these illusions the mind creates, the perfectionism, the control, the elements that have stood in my path, that have stood blocking my light. And so right now, God, the great surgeon, is using his scapel and just slicing away my pride, which was a big that I mean it’s it’s been the biggest detriment in my relationships, not just with myself, but with my husband and my my children and my past. And right now it’s like I was telling somebody this morning I feel like a piece of laundry, and he’s like ringing it out like a towel, like and I’m like, Can you just be a little bit more gentle? Can you just please? And and he’s like, You asked me for this. Remember that you asked me, you wanted to be more like me. Great. I love you for that. It’s gonna require some of this. I’m sorry, but here it goes. And when I read part of like the beginning part of your book, and you said step out of those ashes, you know, fire is a refinement, like there’s metals that get refined in fire. And I always find fire is such a big symbol in the old testament. This is how God showed up with fire, and he uses fire to refine us and to just okay, you’re gonna face trials and tribulations, you’re gonna have perseverance, and out of that perseverance, which is something that defined you, Marsha. I I know that as I was reading, I was like, Yes, this woman and I we might as well be sisters, yes, because uh because we both have gone through similar journeys, I’m not saying the same, we both have encountered powerful men, yes, and we’ve both been so eager to please those powerful men in our life because of our relationship with our fathers. Yes, very good, and we and we both adored our fathers. I adored Mike, yeah, but man, he was he could be harsh. He, you know, there was the constant like you should have been a lawyer and you should have been a doctor. And I was like, and up until then, I like he died. Like when he passed away, he had dementia, and sometimes I couldn’t remember who I was. And and there were times that I could see the flickers, and and when he died, I had several people walk up to me that said, You don’t know how proud your dad was of you. And I was like, Well, I needed to hear that because I didn’t hear it in person from him. Yeah, what I heard was you could have and should have. That’s a tough pill to swallow. Um, and that’s why we both landed in these spaces where we were just so willing to give up our worth. Yes, our worth to make other men look better. Yeah. I just why women do that? I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s like why do we do that?
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, it’s it’s a tough lesson to learn. I was also thinking of an image that I hold while you were speaking when I think of the universe, of God, of the great divine, is kind of like an ocean. And the ocean crashes into the rocks and a spray goes up, and it’s an individual droplets of the spray, which are individual expressions of the ocean itself, but they’re still part of the ocean and connected, and I think that’s how I consider myself as a human being. I’m an individual expression of the consciousness and the divine, where everything is connected, and my little expression is Marsha, and I have my lessons, and I have this color hair and this color of personality fault or whatever, and your expression is Sylvia, and you do your thing. But when we remember, we’re still connected, and when we come from that alignment, and I think alignment trumps everything, it’s when we are thinking our individual expression is a separation, which it’s not, it’s still part of the whole, it’s just an individual expression. When I was in the rainforest, uh uh living with the Ashwar for a period of time, I learned so many lessons. And the chieftain said, You people from the north, and he meant all of us in civilization. He says, You you handle yourself like you’re the fingers on a hand, all so individual and so important by itself. He says, What you fail to realize is you’re part of a hand that’s a community, a tribe, a system, a country, uh, you know, there’s a team, there’s a family. And he says, worse than that, you don’t notice that it’s connected to a whole ecosystem where you are one with the waterfalls and the animals and the rocks and the stars, and you are connected. So I think that knowing that I can be separate in terms of an individual expression, but that it’s an expression of the same. So we’re all one. And as long as I go within and connect to that body of water or light or consciousness or love, that then if I’m aligned, it’ll all work out okay.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, yeah, you feel the disalignment, you know when it’s small. I felt it yesterday, and God came back to me and said, You know how you talked to your husband the other night? Don’t do that, don’t do that. That’s not you are contributing to that corrosion. Yeah, this is your part in that. So I need you to stop pointing the finger at him and to start looking inward and start fixing you. I was like, thank you for that. You’re so kind. Thank you for being gentle and not being like my dad is like what you know, coming downhill. Like, come on, I know you’re responsible and I know you can do this. And oh my goodness, much that we could go on and on. I know we can. We get to the end of this interview. Do change your book once again because we do want to see the cover.
SPEAKER_01:
And it’s a bestseller, and it’s a cliffhanger, and it’s a thriller, and it’s a page turner.
SPEAKER_02:
And yes, you must must read it. I’m not, I’m can’t wait to to get in line to go pick up my daughter so I can go in the phone. I just read past chapter three because I’m there and I’m just I’m you left me hanging, and so now I’ve got to get back to it. But any last words of empowerment for the listeners have released out?
SPEAKER_01:
I would say welcome the experience, and that everybody’s job is what, and the universe’s job is how. And if you put out the what and say, this is what I’m intending, this is what I want, this is what is important, the universe will figure out exactly the way to give it to you. And sometimes it doesn’t give it to you in the way you would expect or that you want, but whatever way it’s giving it to you, you must know it’s the right way because it’s what’s happening. So, whatever the experience, welcome the experience.
SPEAKER_02:
Oh, I love that so much! Oh my goodness. Thank you, Marsha. Really thank you for for being on my show, for for sharing your wisdom, sharing your story.
SPEAKER_01:
It’s so powerful. Oh, and I want to just say one more thing. If people want to go to marsha martin transform.com and it’s M A R C I A, M-A-R-T-I-N-Transform.com, they can sign up for my Marsha Martin Club, which is a digital library of workshops and seminars that I’ve given over the years and podcasts and and speaking engagements, where uh I think if you take a little chunk of the wisdom at a time and at your leisure, it sometimes really penetrates even more profoundly. There’s a free month gift. You can be part of the club for free for a whole month. So Marcia MartinTransform.com.
SPEAKER_02:
Thank you for that. Oh my goodness. Yes, I had forgotten to mention that. I was like, oh, I saw a code I remember on the manuscript. So I’ll definitely look into it. And for the listeners who have released that reveal purpose, remember Matthew 5.14 to be the light. Look, look at the bright light that Marcia has been in the world. You take notice if she can do it coming from where she came from, you can do it too. That nothing is stopping you, only your mind is stopping you, and you have ways around that. If you hear the interview and you let those words seep into you, you’ll find your way. And you let God do figure out the how. You don’t have to figure out the how. That’s his job. Have a wonderful week. Love you. They say bye now.
SPEAKER_00:
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes. We’ll win a chance to grand prize drawing back to win a$25,000 private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.